So anyway, any beginner tips?
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You’ve chosen an immutable distro based on rpm-ostree. If you want to install a program/application/app then flatpak is the way.
Heroic Launcher works great for installing GOG/Epic games but if you want to install a game or other program from an offline installer then I still fall back to Lutris.For more in-depth read up on rpm-ostree and flatpak
Yeeeah, for a fresh Bazzite install I’d agree that “swap Lutris for Heroic” is solid advice.
In Bazzite flatpak is the way so much that you will open Discover and only see flatpak, so if this was really, really beginner tips I’d suggest not learning what any of that means for as long as possible and just relying on Discover for your apps until you hit a roadbump. This guy seems well informed enough that is not a problem, but hey.
I’m also mildly annoyed that ujust is important enough to still need that terminal splash screen but not enough to be baked into the config tools by default in GUI. So weird.
That’s either another thing you should try not to learn about if everything works fine out of the box or something you really should look into if it doesn’t, and that’s not great.
Also worth checking out all of the pre-made “ujust” recipes.
Just type “ujust” in the terminal for a list. Tons of useful shit.
Heroic I find is great for offline installers. I actually prefer it to Lutris I think. You set up your application and it creates a prefix. Before selecting the executable you press the “run installer first” button and it runs the installer on the prefix. Once it’s done you select the executable and it’s set up and good to go.
The Lutris method, IIRC, is you create the prefix, select the installer to run, then you modify that to target the new executable after. It’s not difficult, but the Heroic experience is slightly more streamlined I think.
Meh, I’ve found that Heroic works just fine for most offline installers. YMMV of course.
Use alternativeto.net … not necessarily for just Windows programs alternatives; but it is also great for looking at popular utilities for any task in Linux.
Some programs I use a lot were not suggested anywhere else (e.g. Plumage as a basic text editor and Pinta for basic image editing).
Nice, thanks!
They also have the best tech/software blog I’ve ever seen
A lot of games are going to work without you having to do anything and some will need some tinkering. In that case, https://www.protondb.com/ will be your best friend, telling you exactly what you need to do to get things running.
That being said, some games simply can’t be run under Linux. They might work in the future as compatibility improves but some won’t. If it’s an issue for you, you might want to dual boot windows as a workaround.
Personally, I recommend quitting Windows cold-turkey and not dual-booting at all. If a game genuinely doesn’t work without dual-booting, you don’t need it. No game is so important that it’s worth compromising your security, privacy, and property rights over.
Unfortunately some of us need windows for more than games, and there aren’t Linux alternatives
Yep, and the more people do this then the more likely it will be that games support Linux (or are at least tested to work with WINE/Proton.
This 100%. Give up Windows and never look back, you will not regret it.
Im a wuss and have an older laptop running windows for some things. Its really just me being lazy and not wanting to bother with the high hanging fruit.
Funnily, sometimes the pirate version of a game works whilst the official one does not…
If you do dual boot, turn on the BIOS password to prevent Windows from messing with your bootloader.
but dont dual boot on the same drive! get a second SSD or something because windows is a big bully and always wants to screw stuff up
Good thing about the distro he chose is that pretty much every game will run fine. I love bazzite. Two months on it now and I haven’t even had to open the terminal or download a single driver. It’s definitely been my go to recommendation for anyone looking to leave windows and build a gaming PC.
I’ve seen some folks complain about its size, but it’s like 8 or 9gb. Small price to pay if you ask me for how turnkey it is. Besides storage is cheap now.
I’m so used to terminal that I’ve installed most of the apps I’ll use using it
I’m curious why you chose Bazzite then? I’m not saying it’s the wrong choice, but it does seem like a strange choice if you’re comfortable, well unless this is for a console-like computer, not a desktop.
Other people recommended it to me, simple as that
I’ve seen some folks complain about its size, but it’s like 8 or 9gb. Small price to pay if you ask me for how turnkey it is. Besides storage is cheap now.
Especially when you consider Windows is like 20-30GB
Yeah I think people are just kind of used to how small some distros be and eventually it stops being a game of how much space can I save and more like dogma lol.
I mean even if you’ve got some tiny machine with only 128gb you’re still talking less than 10% of the machine vs. upwards of 25%
The best tip I can give you is to get rid of windows, and, well, you’ve already done that :)
Nice! I recently tried KDE Plasma and I’ve been really impressed not just with the polish but with the look and feel that still kind of reminds me of Windows without being Windows.
Love me some Plasma. I’m still running the default styles after over a year as well. It’s just nice.
I really should spend some time experimenting with customizations though
Yeah, it’s like all the good parts of the Windows UI (whichever version you like best) without the bad parts, and also customizable so you can make it work best for you, and not what some corporation decides is best this year.
I’ve seen Plasma, Xfce, and GNOME. I like the last one the most, so I’m using it on all of my systems.
I can’t stand GNOME, but I understand that other people like it.
Less a specific linux tip but look into Ventoy, it can carry multiple bootable ISOs and its just useful (reduces the amount of ISO Sticks to 1)
i would suggest looking into alternatives to Ventoy, as the community has been actively discussing the ‘blobs’ of precompiled code. What this code does is unknown so you are trusting that there is nothing that could be harmful. I personally wouldn’t trust it until the below thread provides more clarity.
ventoy is awesome, my tip for OP is to always have a live usb in case of emergencies. you can just install ventoy onto a USB and drag and drop your bazzite ISO but having a live stick you can plug in and boot from at any moment is 100% a life saver. whether you broke something or you just wanna troubleshoot (think windows safe mode but better) you’ll be glad you kept that USB lying around :)
So, this one is a bit controversial but, when something doesn’t work try running it from terminal.
Unlike windows, Linux doesn’t tend to do “pop up errors”. Running in terminal gives these alerts, and can often give you a hint as to why it isn’t working - be it a missing library, a permission error, or something internal you can quickly search. Usually, someone has a fix!
Also, if it’s a decent application, it probably logs stuff somewhere. Check /var/log for software installed system wide. If the logs are not there, check the install dir etc. If there’s a README around, check that out first.
Good luck!
ONE OF US ! ONE OF US !
is this your production machine? If yes, dont type random commands until you know exactly what they are.
I know it’s Linux and you can try many things as you want, but unless you are very experienced, dont do it on your main laptop.
It is pretty difficult because you can do things like installing new enviroments or try out different hacks for free. If you really want to tinker, do it on a 2nd laptop or just in Virtual Machine.
+1 for Bazzite! I converted last year, and have never had to go back. My tip would be to make good use of ProtonUp-QT that should have come with Bazzite by default. Use it to get Proton GE which in my experience has been the best compatibility layer for Steam games. You can also batch update with that tool so that when a new version of GE comes out, you can set games en masse to the new version.
I’m using GNOME, so I have ProtonPlus
I did the same a few months ago. Installed bazzite just like you. Then installed fedora 42 workstation over it one week later.
While it’s designed to be plug and play, I found bazzite frustrating. But then again, I’m a Linux vet and I’m a tinkerer. I like to customise system configuration files. Immutable distros just weren’t for me.
But if your happy then that’s all that matters. Happy gaming!
Bazzite allows for tinkering just fine, it’s just different so you have to be willing to put a little time in to learn how ostree works, for example.
Of course it can be tinkered with, but it wasn’t really designed to be tinkered with in the same way that you can with a traditional Linux system. It’s designed to keep users from messing with system files with its strict containerised workflow. It’s certainly not targeted at users who’ll want to hack systemd services, customise kernel modules, tweak system files under /etc and /usr, or even compile software from source.
I acknowledge that it’s possible to create highly customised and reproducible systems with immutable distros, but it’s a paradigm shift compared to a traditional *nix system.
I’ve spent 20+ years refining my knowledge of linux and BSD, I haven’t got the patience to start over with these types of systems.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all criticising these systems for being different. They serve a completely different purpose —one that’s just not for me.
I was just pointing out that the “you can’t tinker with immutable distros” thing is inaccurate. I am relatively new to Linux, so its not as big of a deal for me to adjust and learn how it works. But yeah it’s different and there is a learning curve so if you’ve been using non-immutable distros for a long time, then it probably isn’t worth re-learning a bunch of shit.
I kinda hope one day there is a “easy mode” Immutable distro, or perhaps atleast some kind of point-and-click GUI tools for managing something like flakes on a NixOS like system. I love the idea behind NixOS, but don’t want to learn a new programming language just to configure my system. It’ll get easier in the future I suppose. And when it does, I’ll be here for it. Obviously Bazzite is trying to be more beginner friendly which is cool, but it’s still quite a complicated system underneath the limited GUI options.
Bazzite is very easy… I think people psych themselves out about using the terminal, it’s really not difficult. You don’t even need to use the terminal in Bazzite if you don’t want to. But you can if you want to tinker or whatever… I just find it strange for someone to be savvy enough to tinker, yet intimidated enough by the terminal to avoid it completely.
But yeah most, if not all, of the things you need to do in Bazzite is available with some sort of gui. It’s just unnecessary imo.
Always make sure to remove the French language pack:
> rm -fr /Is good joke.
Only downvoted cuz no “/s” at the next line.
Luckily for OP, Bazzite won’t let you do this. Not this easily at least.
You forgot --no-preserve-root
My best advice is:
You should never blindly copy and paste commands form the Internet into your terminal.
But...
If your hardware is old and proprietary (designed for Windows), you might someday need to copy and paste a command from the Internet into your terminal.
Joking aside, the key is to try to understand what it does, first.
And feel free to ask the community for help if you need it.
Edit: Nevermind. Your choice of immutable distro makes it less likely you’ll need this advice. Nice.
You can blindly download and install things from the internet on Windows, you can’t in Linux. If you try, it’ll be confusing at best, destructive at worst. If you want to install something, best to look for it in your GUI software manager (the “app store”)
If you’re up for the challenge (it’s extremely tedious to set up, partially thanks to its horrid instructions), you can try installing winapps. It’ll save you a lot of time with running Windows programs
This is not totally true. Deb packages will just activate the package manager and will mimic the feel of installing something on windows.
Bazzite is based on fedora atomic, which means I don’t get debs and have to deal with flatpak, brew and distrobox
Okay, I kinda do get debs through the last one… I think. I’ve never used db before, my experience comes mostly from Ubuntu and Pop_OS!
Yea, and appimages are a lot like a single .exe
Mess around until it breaks. It’s fun.
Also checkout “ricing linux.” (There is a unixporn community here that can help you)Linux is great but make sure you also have a secondary computer for if and when it randomly doesn’t boot or won’t update anymore. You can probably get a used laptop pretty cheap.
I have a junktop with Ubuntu 24.04 and a live USB
You’ve obtained the zen.
